Poetry Friday - What I Learned From My Mother

I am hitting the road today to spend some time with my mother. This poem is for her.

What I Learned From My Mother
by Julia Kasdorf

I learned from my mother how to love
the living, to have plenty of vases on hand
in case you have to rush to the hospital
with peonies cut from the lawn, black ants
still stuck to the buds. I learned to save jars
large enough to hold fruit salad for a whole
grieving household, to cube home-canned pears
and peaches, to slice through maroon grape skins
and flick out the sexual seeds with a knife point.

Read the entire poem.

The round up is being hosted by Mary Lee over at A Year of Reading. Do stop by and take in all the wonderful works being shared this week. Happy poetry Friday all!

I'll be on hiatus (yeah, I've been on one for a while) for the rest of the month, but I'll be back in August. I'm hoping to pick up where I left off about a year ago with, you know, regular blogging, book reviews, and poetry. See you soon!

Science, Art, and a New Book

Tonight is my last night of summer school. I've had little time for anything but teaching as of late, but when this came across my desk I had to share. Take a look at the excerpts from the fascinating and absolutely stunning book Field Notes on Science & Nature, edited by Michael Canfield.

Beautiful Data: The Art of Science Field Notes

Monday Poetry Stretch - Books and Reading

I am five days away from vacation--count 'em--just FIVE! If I can get through 6 candidate interviews, my last class sessions, and final grades, I'll be home free. I am looking forward to the last HP movie and reading until my eyeballs fall out of my head. As Emily said, "There is no Frigate like a Book/To take us Lands away," so let's write about reading and books. Leave me a note about your poem and I'll post the results here later this week.

Tuesday Poetry Stretch - Fireworks

So yesterday was a holiday, and as you can see, I took that quite literally. I love those days when the pj's don't come off until noon! We saw fireworks on Saturday, which was fortuitous since they were rained out last night.

I haven't been able to stop thinking about fireworks since the weekend, in large part because the display we saw was once of the nicest I've seen in a while. So let's write about fireworks, the ones in the sky or the ones in your heart. Leave me a note about your poem and I'll post the results here later this week.

Until I see you back here, here's a short poem.

Starburst
colors galore
dancing before the sky
launched heavenward to fall again
KABOOM!

Monday Poetry Stretch - Sleep (or Sleepless)

Blogging here has come to a near standstill as I teach Monday-Thursday from 9-3 and Monday and Wednesday nights from 4-10. I am tired, tired, tired. Some afternoons I find myself longing for a nap. This, of course, has me thinking of sleep, counting sheep, and sleepy poetry. Let's make that our topic for this stretch. Leave me a note about your poem and I'll post the results here later this week.

Monday Poetry Stretch - Small Moments

My dad's been gone just over two years now, and I find myself thinking back on the small moments we shared. These musings have me wondering what events my son will one day remember. Will it be eating chocolate gelato at the farmer's market at 8 am? (Yes, that was this weekend!) Will it be curled up on the couch together reading a book? Or perhaps the times hunched over the dining room table working on a puzzle?

Let's write about little things this week--the things we do with others that lead to lasting memories. Leave me a note about your poem and I'll post the results here later this week.

Monday Poetry Stretch - Marking Time

I recently celebrated an anniversary. It happens to mark the number of years I've been at the university. That got me thinking about time -- and all the ways we mark it. I follow the academic year (one for college and one for elementary school, both of which are on decidedly different calendars), the New Year, and the church year (which begins with advent). Now I add to this the number of years without my father. Every time I look at a calendar I see some new way to mark the time that is slipping away.

How do you mark the passage of time? Let's write about that. Leave me a note about your poem and I'll post the results later this week.

Poetry Friday - Glass

I've been reading some "new-to-me' poets these days. Ah, how much I've missed! Here's a poem that I particularly like.

Glass
by A. R. Ammons

The song
sparrow puts all his
saying
into one
repeated song:
what

variations, subtleties
he manages,
to encompass denser
meanings, I’m
too coarse
to catch: it’s

Read the poem in its entirety.

The round up is being hosted by Anastasia Suen at Picture Book of the Day. Do stop by and take in the wonderful poetry being shared. Before you go, be sure to check out this week's poetry stretch results. Happy poetry Friday all!

Poetry Stretch Results - Beat the Heat

The challenge this week was to write about ways to keep cool and beat the heat. Here are the results.

Mad Kane shared an AC-related limerick she wrote last year entitled Hot Limerick.


Steven Withrow shared a poem he and his five-year-old daughter wrote based on one of her drawings.

ELEPHANT’S OASIS
By Steven and Marin Withrow

One morning on his way to school
The elephant stopped for a shower.
He dipped his trunk into a pool
And siphoned up with sucking power
Liquid through the tubelike tool

His nose became that scorching hour
Sun shone slant—a cruel jewel—
Then held aloft his water tower
And drenched his bulk in drops of cool
Refreshment, like a nourished flower.

©2011 Steven Withrow, all rights reserved

Diane Mayr of Random Noodling shared this poem.

a tanka

wrists thrust under
a cold running faucet
sweat drips
into eyes always looking
forward to the next season

Recipe for Cool
by Jane Yolen

Here's a recipe for cool.
1. Dip body into pool

Haven't got a pool, you say?
Move to Scotland, no delay.

2. Ice cream can be a treat

Lactose you are loathe to eat?
Scotland then, don't miss a beat.

3. Air conditioner on the fritz?
Bits of water now it spits?

Come to Scotland, no delay.
We had summer yesterday.


Ice Cream Cone
by Kate Coombs of Book Aunt

Chocolate,
vanilla,
chocolate chip,
run through the sun
with a drip, drip, drip!

Strawberry,
bubble gum,
peppermint stick,
run through the sun
with a lick, lick, lick!

Neapolitan,
butterscotch,
caramel gold,
run through the sun
with a mouthful of cold!

--Kate Coombs, 2011, all rights reserved


How to Beat the Heat?
by Julie Larios of The Drift Record

Tube it -
tied together
floating down the river.

Cube it -
lemonade
with ice and shivers.

Popsicle it -
guaranteed
to keep you cool.

Cannonball it -
off the high board
at the City Pool.

It's not too late if you still want to play. Leave me a note about your poem and I'll add it to the list.

Monday Poetry Stretch - Beat the Heat!

I work on the third floor of an old, brick building, very quaint and usually quite beautiful. However, it is anything but comfortable by most standards. It is hot in the summer and cold in the winter, and that's even when we have our individual heat/AC units running.

We have had no AC since the weekend, and it is officially an oven here. You know what they say about heat rising? My ability to work is melting with every degree the temperature rises. However, I have two classes this evening and must press on. I'm listening to Vince Guaraldi's A Charlie Brown Christmas and trying to think "cool" thoughts. How do you beat the heat? That's what I think we should write about. Leave me a note about your poem and I'll post the results here later this week.

Poetry Friday - What is One?

This week my math class began learning about numbers and number sense. While I was thinking about activities to share with them and notions about what it means to really understand numbers (what is a 5 anyway? or a two? or any number really?), I found myself reading poems in the book Take a Number, written by Mary O'Neill and illustrated by Al Nagy. Here is a bit from a poem about the number one. I've included a small section from the poem's beginning and end.

Excerpt from What is One?
by Mary O'Neill

One is any single thing:
A strawberry,
A diamond ring,
A book to read,
A song to sing,
A hat, a coat,
A birth, a death
The inhale, exhale,
of a breath.
. . .
Sometimes one seems much more
Than a single thing,
For one can be a country,
Or the season we call Spring.
One can be the universe
With all its planets spinning,
And one can be as tiny as
A grain of sand's beginning.

The round up is being hosted by Toby Speed of The Writer's Armchair. Do stop by and take in all the wonderful poetry being shared. Before you go, be sure to check out this week's poetry stretch results. Happy poetry Friday all!

Poetry Stretch Results - The Sun

The challenge this week was to write a sun poem. Here are the results.

Beachcomber
by Steven Withrow of Crackles of Speech

Sitting in the sand,
sifting through her pail
of wonders from the waves,
she whispers to a shell
a secret that the sea-sound
sings back to her.
Her rescued rocks
are round enough for skipping,
and her bits of beach glass,
blues and greens,
shade the shoreline
a shimmering rainbow.
The crown of her cache
is a crab’s claw, freshly
dug from a dune
with a double-headed shovel,
like a buried bone,
a bird’s fossil,
Neptune’s ghost-glove,
or a knight’s gauntlet.
Her tiny bucket
is a treasure box
of human jetsam, too:
a hard-plastic juice cup
cracked at the lip,
a red crayon, the lid
off a popcorn can,
a pearl-toothed comb
a mermaid dropped
among the driftwood
for a girl to find,
a gift of friendship
and a message sent
to make certain
someone will recall
the sacred code.
The gulls, in loops,
fly low over the ground,
hunting for scraps
and screeching hungrily,
angrily, echoing
at every angle
around her head.
She hears their ruckus
only as a murmured
music from the ocean,
a lullaby,
a barnacle’s laugh
as the rising tide
tickles its ribs.
The dappled sun
will soon go down.
Her sieve is full
of falling sand.

©2011 Steven Withrow, all rights reserved


Mad Kane shared a limerick entitled Healthy, Or Half-Baked?. She also left this poem in the comments.

A woman was feeling undone
By years in the hot, baking sun.
Her skin was a fright.
What a rough, wrinkly sight!
And suitors? Alas, she had none.


Julie Larios of The Drift Record shared this poem.

Undone
by sun
today,
I play
and get
all giddy.
Ready,
set, go goofy
on the lawn,
running
so the sun
will see me
and be pleased
as punch -
ooooooo-
eeeeeee,
flying
like a bumble
bee, I buzz
goodbye
to my
rain funk,
today
I'm twirling
on the grass
because I'm sun-
drunk.

Julie wrote to let us know that the kind of sun in her poem hadn't hit the Pacific Northwest yet. Apparently, Jane Yolen isn't seeing much in Scotland either!

Another Grey Day

The Scottish sky is a pearl,
grey and white, full of lustre
with no sign of sun.
Yet the garden pulses green
and flowers lift their dewy faces
in hope towards the sky.
As do I.
As do I.

©2011 Jane Yolen, all rights reserved

It's not too late if you still want to play. Leave me a note about your poem and I'll add it to the list.

Tuesday Poetry Stretch - The Sun

I'm a day late and more than a dollar short, but yesterday was a holiday. (That's my story and I'm sticking to it!)

While lazing in the heat of the sun yesterday I found myself thinking remembering the first stanza of a poem from childhood. It's in my very tattered copy of A Child's Garden of Verses. I had to look it up when I got home because I couldn't remember the rest of the poem.

Summer Sun
by Robert Louis Stevenson

Great is the sun, and wide he goes
Through empty heaven without repose;
And in the blue and glowing days
More thick than rain he showers his rays.

Though closer still the blinds we pull
To keep the shady parlour cool,
Yet he will find a chink or two
To slip his golden fingers through.

The dusty attic, spider-clad,
He, through the keyhole, maketh glad;
And through the broken edge of tiles
Into the laddered hay-loft smiles.

Meantime his golden face around
He bares to all the garden ground,
And sheds a warm and glittering look
Among the ivy's inmost nook.

Above the hills, along the blue,
Round the bright air with footing true,
To please the child, to paint the rose,
The gardener of the World, he goes.

I also like the poem Warm Summer Sun by Mark Twain. Do you have a favorite sun poem?

So, your challenge is to write a sun poem. Leave me a note about your poem and I'll post the results here later this week.

E-Books for Teachers!

If you are a fan of Scholastic Teacher Guides, then you won't want to miss this sale. Until May 31st you will find more than 500 e-books on sale for $1.00. Yup, you heard that right--only $1.00! Are you doing a happy dance? I am!

If you are looking for poetry resources, you'll find titles by Betsy Franco, including Counting Caterpillars and Other Math Poems and Graphic Organizers for Teaching Poetry Writing.

There are 125 titles for math, ranging from grades preK through middle school. There are also titles for social studies, science, language arts, and more. You can preview any title before making a purchase.

For more information and to search for resources, check out the Scholastic Teacher Express - Dollar Days site.

First Day of Math - Let's Start With a Puzzle!

Summer school begins tonight. Two nights a week for three hours each night I will be teaching preservice teachers how to teach math. This is perhaps my favorite class to teach. I get folks who are often quite nervous about taking a course with the word math in the title and have just eight short weeks to develop their confidence in and love for a subject for which many willingly express a dislike. Hey, I love a good challenge.

Unlike many instructors, I do not begin by handing out the syllabus or even by giving introductions. I ask students to clear their desks and then working in teams, I give them a math problem or puzzle to solve. In past semesters I have started off with tangrams, attribute block trains, and pentominoes. The puzzles they solve are challenging. I ask them to keep a list of all the math concepts and skills they are using while working towards their solutions. It may sound odd, but I want them jump headfirst into thinking mathematically and realize quickly that they need to become comfortable in their "mathematical skin." I also need them to understand that to teach math they need to know math--really KNOW math. In fact, this is how my syllabus begins.

You cannot teach what you do not know. There is a large body of evidence from which educational researchers have concluded that the quality of teacher subject matter knowledge directly affects student learning. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the teaching of mathematics. We also know that “a teacher’s subject matter knowledge of school mathematics is a product of the interaction between mathematical competence and concern about teaching and learning mathematics (Ma, 1999).” As a result, this course is focused on developing your mathematical competence so that you will not only know the mathematics you will teach one day, but also feel utterly confident in discussing and explaining it.

It is only AFTER they get this message that I hand out the syllabus and allow introductions, though having started with a group task they have already begun to know one another.

So, what task am I starting with today? This time around I'm going with some Kakuro puzzles. Like Sudoku, the object of filling in a kakuro grid is to fill the boxes with numbers so that no number is repeated in a column or row. However, kakuro puzzles are based on finding sums. Here is what one looks like.
After introducing the puzzle and explaining the rules, I solve a sample problem with them and model strategies. Then they are given a few problems to solve with a partner.

If you are interested in trying some kakuro puzzles yourself, here are a few useful resources.

• Solving Techniques
• Kakuro Puzzles for Kids
• A Kid's Math Printable Kakuro Puzzles
• KrazyDad Kakuro Puzzles
• Kakuro Cross Sums

When students get to work, I get to observe. What will I learn about my students by listening and watching them solve puzzles? A lot! I will learn how flexibly they think. I'll learn something about their number sense. I'll learn how they approach problem solving and something about their ability to deal with a challenge. I will also learn how well they work with others, what their mathematical discourse sounds like, and a whole lot about their feelings towards math.

Once we've finished solving and discussing the puzzles, then we get down to business, but not before I read a poem and a book or two. (You can read more about this at the post The Importance of Math in Our Lives.)

Monday Poetry Stretch - Eggs

I'm quite fond of the articles published at the Poetry Foundation web site. In the article Again! Again! by Sonia Levitin, she says the following about poetry.

As adults, we’ve learned to turn to poetry to mark an important occasion: a wedding, a death, a graduation, the birth of a child. Poems are large enough to capture the emotional richness of the event. But I think we forget that poetry is also large enough to encapsulate everyday experiences—and children’s poetry does that so well: the wonder of seeing a caterpillar wind its way across the sidewalk, the birth of a butterfly, the beauty of a pansy, the taste of maple syrup. Children’s poems take for their subjects every possible relationship, training the heart and the mind to savor and pay attention in a language that a child can understand.

I love the fact that poetry pays attention to the everyday and makes the ordinary extraordinary. Since I reviewed a book on eggs today, that's the subject that is stuck in my mind. So let's write about eggs. Leave me a note about your poem and I'll post the results here later this week.

Nonfiction Monday - Eggs

The eNature blog had an interesting post last week entitled Why Do Bird Eggs Vary In Shape and Color?. That and a trip to the lake to watch the baby goslings got me thinking about egg books.

Eggs, written by Marilyn Singer and illustrated by Emma Stevenson, is a gorgeous look at these extraordinary vehicles of early life. The book begins:

IT'S A QUIET CRIB.
It's a bobbing boat.
It's a private pond.
It's a room with no view.
It's walls to break through.
It's breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
It's an egg.

It goes on to discuss how all animals need to make more of their own kinds, and that while some animals give birth to live young, many animals lay eggs instead. Eggs are described as special worlds that provide everything a developing embryo needs to grow, from food and drink to oxygen. But embryos need more than this to survive. They need a hospitable climate, meaning they must not freeze of overheat. Singer goes on to describe the texture, shape, size and color of eggs. Readers learn about how many eggs different species lay, how they're protected by parents, nests, or both, and how they hatch. Emma Stevenson makes her debut as a picture book illustrator with this book and it is a beautiful first effort. The gouache paintings are finely detailed and offer a visual treat to accompany the text.

The book ends with a extensive series of notes, including information on protecting eggs, a glossary, source notes and wildlife organizations. A comprehensive index is also included.

I learned several new facts about eggs while reading this book. Here are a few of them.

• Bird eggshells are always hard, but their texture varies? Some eggs feel soapy, while some are powdery.

• A flying fish's eggs have long threads to catch on to seaweed so they won't float into dangerous waters?

• A termite queen may lay as many as a billion eggs in her lifetime?

Overall, this is an informative and thoroughly engaging book. I highly recommend it.

Book: Eggs
Author: Marilyn Singer
Illustrator: Emma Stevenson
Publisher: Holiday House
Publication Date: 2008
Pages: 32 pages
Grades: 3-8
ISBN: 978-0-8234-1727-8
Source of Book: Personal copy purchased from a local independent bookstore.

If you are interested in some other books about eggs, check out my thematic book list on spring life that focused on eggs and life cycles.

This review was written for Nonfiction Monday. Head on over to Great Kid Books and check out all the great posts highlighting nonfiction this week.

Poetry Friday - 9

I've been thinking about time lately. Perhaps it's because I'm reading THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH ("As you can see, that leaves almost no time for brooding, lagging, plodding, or procrastinating, and if we stopped to think or laugh, we'd never get nothing done.") yet again. Or maybe it's just that as another school year comes to an end, I'm wondering where the time is going.

So, as I'm thinking about time, here's a bit of E. E. Cummings that seemed appropriate.

9.
by E. E. Cummings

there are so many tictoc
clocks everywhere telling people
what toctic time it is for
tictic instance five toc minutes toc
past six tic

Read the poem in its entirety.

The round up is being hosted by the amazing Julie Larios at The Drift Record. Do stop by and take in all the terrific poetry being shared this week. Before you go, be sure to check out this week's poetry stretch results. Happy poetry Friday all!

Online Storytime

I recently came across an online storytime site at Barnes and Noble that may interest you. This would be a fine place to send kids AFTER they've read a book with you or on their own. The videos are nicely narrated and use art from the books. So far there are 12 titles. They are:

• Charlie the Ranch Dog
• The Very Hungry Caterpillar
• Green Eggs and Ham
• Pinkalicious
• Strega Nona
• The Polar Express
• The Mitten
• Where the Wild Things Are
• Olivia
• Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.
• Smash! Crash!
• Fancy Nancy: Bonjour, Butterfly

So, if you are interested in online stories well told, take a look at the Online Storytime channel at Barnes and Noble.

Monday Poetry Stretch - Sijo

Originating in Korea, sijo are poems divided into three or six lines. These poems frequently use word play in the form of metaphors, symbols and puns. Here is a description from AHApoetry.

More ancient than haiku, the Korean SIJO shares a common ancestry with haiku, tanka and similar Japanese genres. All evolved from more ancient Chinese patterns.

Sijo is traditionally composed in three lines of 14-16 syllables each, totaling between 44-46 syllables. A pause breaks each line approximately in the middle; it resembles a caesura but is not based on metrics.

I'm quite fond of the poems in Linda Sue Park's book Tap Dancing on the Roof: Sijo Poems. Her sijo are full of little surprises. One of my favorites is entitled Long Division. It is the poem that gives the book its title. Another favorite is the poem below.

Summer Storm

Lightning jerks the sky awake to take her photograph, flash!
Which draws grumbling complaints or even crashing tantrums from thunder--

He hates having his picture taken, so he always gets there late.

You can read some other examples of sijo at the Sejong Writing Competition.

How do you write a sijo? Here is a brief summary of the advice Park gives at the end of her book.

Three line poems should contain about 14 to 16 syllables per line. Six line poems should contain 7 or 8 syllables per line.

The first line should contain a single image or idea. The second line should develop this further. The last line should contain the twist.

So, your challenge this week is to write a sijo. Leave me a note about your poem and I'll post the results here later this week.